Manovich is symptomatic of the classic techno-determinist. “We are, because computers”. To my mind this is putting the cart before the horse. Some want so desperately to escape the crude bondage of the physical form that they will invariably try and fit the data to the model.
“Computer games both mimic existing games, and create new genres”. Don’t people create the new genres? And do the mimicking? Manovich also speaks of the “computerisation of culture”, but isn’t it really a “culture of computerisation”? Arguing semantic points with a computer programmer may be a waste of time, but I take exception to the insistence that it is us who resemble the machine world, rather than the other way round. Computers might represent our desires, to be efficient, brilliant and hard-working but there has been no magical evolutionary jump whereabouts we became ‘like them’. This is not simply pro-biological hubris, we use the metaphors to explain the pre-existing. Networks and databases can be used to explain how human beings might function, but we do not necessarily become the metaphor, just because it might feel good to say so.
In the sense that human evolution can be viewed as a combination of ‘programs and algorithms’ -because, like dude, the universe is all maths – I agree with Manovich, but if anything I believe it reinforces my previous point. Programs and algorithms can explain evolution but evolution did not happen like it did because we discovered programs and algorithms. In other words, our resemblance to computers – to whatever extent this might be true, or not – is already the function of a pre-existing condition, a way that is irrespective of whether or not the computer is there to hold up the mirror. The computer, or the program, or whatever you like, is another metaphor for explaining what is already there. I would ask the question, ‘why are we so desperate to be like the machines’? Anyway… moving on…
Manovich makes the point that data itself is active. This resonates strongly with me as I struggle to see any passive principle in nature. Even the rock holding itself together is a form of Will, of resistance, but active does not have to mean intentional and perhaps this is where the confusion comes about.
Seaman:
In contrast to Manovich, I find myself immediately in agreement with Seaman as he quotes, “The poetic of computers lies in the genius of individual programmers” and that “computers are in the service of individual expression”. The notion of database poetics sits much more comfortably with me than the idea of hypertext narrative having any validity.
One piece of information that my brain is having less trouble assimilating is the concept of the rhizome. As I understand it – a whole that contains the whole of its potential but only manifest as specific variations on the available theme.